On Pumpkin, Calabaza and Bad Blood
by Grool
Summary: She not only compared him to squash, but she had to use the ordinary type of pumpkins, the ones you find on the Hogwarts breakfast tables and wouldn't use in a wizarding war... One shot. Tom/Myrtle.
**All right, I know this thing is hilarious... I actually set out to write an angst-y and lengthy fic, but what had been intended as a tearjerker turned out to be a joke and degenerated into a farce...**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling, not me! Don't over-react, I know this is bit of a shock to you all, but we all have to live with the fact that there is only one Rowling and we muggles have no access to polyjuice potions.**

 **Anyway, please review! I hope it's at least a good laugh...**

"So, what did he say?" Pharisy Blishwick had been nagging her since ten minutes ago, from the moment she sent their two Valentines out the window. The enchanted cards hovered a moment outside the window of their turret, fluttering fitfully like their hearts, before finally heading for their destinations way down in the dungeons under the lake.

"They're tuned to send back voices as soon as he touches them… we could be hearing from him any time." Myrtle answered in a suppressed whisper, as if in awe of the project they're about to carry out. She had been working on the eavesdropping charm for a whole year, and had only just finished in time for Valentine. The cards are bound to reach him in five minutes as the crow flies… She wondered if something had gone wrong.

Maybe he wouldn't even bother to touch it. A tiny voice nagged at the back of her head but she refused the notion with a slight shake of her head.

"What?" Pharisy was fidgeting with her golden locks. She threw an anxious glance outside the window, trying to make out the voice replayed so many times in her dreams. Nothing but the wind. "Myrtle, you didn't happen to provide me with incomplete charms, did you? The potion on that pitiable thing cost me a hell lot of Sickles! "

"It's coming!" Myrtle suddenly let out a little squeak while her friend nearly tripped over her squat body. Every pimple on her face seemed to shine forth with a radiant pink as she blushed crimson.

"Put it back? Are you sure you don't want to read this, Tom?"

The voice was familiar, but it wasn't the one that they had expected. The two girls exchanged a bewildered glance but listened on.

"No, I can never hold a candle to my saintly cousin twice removed on the mother's side and I don't intend to. For all I care, magical waste and potion gases can weave out a patchwork quilt of flotsam and jetsam to keep this earth warm. My fortune lies underground, under locks and under dragons in Gringotts, while the Malfoy Mansion has a stable for Thestrals. "

Distant cousin? Magical Waste? "He might be referring to the Muggle-loving Alchemist Esther Killick, who got herself entangled in an affair with a muggle called Swanty Arraynius, I think I read about it somewhere…" Pharisy came from an ancient, if somewhat failing pureblood family, and she knew everyone who was anyone in the magical society.

The Killicks were the typical poor relatives whom the Malfoys tried to steer clear of but could never entirely rid themselves of. What Pharisy didn't say was that her mother was a Killick and her family relished this distant tie to the Malfoys, who would dole out galleons simply to keep their mouths shut.

"Svante Arrhenius? " Myrtle had read about this chemist who died two years prior to her birth. "He proposed a theory concerning the effect of fossil fuel on global warming. I think this is what Malfoy's talking about. But why would our valentines have anything to do with magical wastes and the heating of the world? "

Pharisy kept her mouth shut and remained cool about the muggle and his theory.

"Really you should at least take a look, Tom. No, there is no charm on the cards that compelled me to salvage them from the wastebasket and hand them to you. And no, I am not a Marionette of swooning Ravenclaw girls. NO! If you keep going into every fawning relative of mine who would whelp and stand on their heads for a bunch of galleons, I would have to put a taboo curse on every wizarding family's name ranging from Carter to Warbeck! Blast the Killicks and their daughter! " Marion Malfoy spat so hard the girls jumped back simultaneously.

By now Pharisy was as pale as a sheet, but Myrtle was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice much else.

The waste basket. She had been preparing for this day since Christmas of her first year, and her masterpiece was thrown into the wastebasket, without even reaching the hands of its destined receiver. Angry tears streamed down her face, failing to wash away her chagrin. But she listened on.

"For My Dearest Tom:

Dippet is red,

Slughorn is green.

Pumpkin is juicy

And so you seem." Her verses were read aloud by the voice she had hoped to hear from and now dreaded to hear of. "You see, Malfoy, the mudblood didn't even try to compare me to Umpkinpay's Calabaza, which at least had some values as the only type of squash that could withstand the Jack-o-lantern Bombarding Hex and was used in the Battle of All Hallows."

"I know you stayed awake throughout Binns' class, there's no need to emphasize the point. " Marion Malfoy drawled. "I just thought such bewitching verses ought at least to be laughed upon. "

Then a slight whooshing sound reached the ears of the eavesdropping girls, followed by the scrunching of hard papers being disintegrated, and everything fell into silence.

A mudblood. That was the only reason Tom Riddle gave for trashing the valentine card that embodied the love she bore for him ever since she crossed him on the corridors on Halloween in her first year. He didn't even bother to mention her squatness, her pimples, her whiny spells. Her blood was all that mattered. Myrtle sank into her four-poster bed drowning her shame and anger in tears while Pharisy ran howling out of their rooms ranting about a filthy mudblood roommate ruining her best chance. She had spent a handful of Sickles on a card that was thrown away with that very roommate's.


End file.
